Inspiring the honor of National Girls and Women in Sports Day, this past month for Stockton has found great pride early this semester for its sports teams, where through January 16 to 18, Stockton’s Dance Team had made it to the finals in the Universal Dance Association’s (UDA) College Nationals at Orlando, Florida, all inside of the ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex as they competed in three different Open Divisions and getting into the top 5 leaderboard, their Hip-Hop routine winning second place and their Jazz and Game Day performances tying at fifth. Senior Performing Arts major and Stockton Dance Team President, Juliana Bolish, sat down with writer, Kamelea Saitova, to discuss her experience.

Preparation and Practice

“It was surprising because we’d never done Game Day before, so it was entirely new to us,” said Bolish, who reported this event as the university’s first time participating in the Open Division for Game Day: the cheerleading tournament where they competed against sixteen other universities for those preliminaries alone. “On January 16th there were three different competitions with the jazz team, then there were the preliminaries for game day, the hip-hop semi-finals, and then jazz on Friday again… We competed against sixteen schools for game day, around thirty schools for jazz, and around twenty for hip-hop.”

The Stockton Dance Team had worked with dedication and passion to get their practice and routine in. “We practiced all winter break for this event,” Miss Bolish kindly provided the team’s standard schedule when the semester started once more, “so we practiced seven hours a week: two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays and two to three hours every Sunday.”

The crew of performing arts talents had a recent increase of members, adding fifteen new recruits that Juliana Bolish mentioned worthily, “I’m so proud of the newcomers, they worked so hard and adapted so quickly to the new and tight routine and schedule, it’s inspiring.” All twenty-six members participated in the Game Day Open Division finals and helped to fundraise for their trip to Florida, “all the team members pitched in,” with a little help from the university itself, “Thanks to the school sponsors and our senate, they helped make this trip possible.”

This dedication from the team should also be attributed to their coaches, Erin Knapp and Taylor Hurle. “They choreographed the dances and made sure they were very professional,” the president of the team explained that previously Erin was the reason the team had gotten into the top three leaderboards back in 2016-2017 when she was an adjunct professor at the university, and Taylor Hurle as an assistant coach currently volunteers her time when she is not teaching students as a professor.

Hurle however, was not the only alumni to attend the event to support her undergraduates, “The fact that they [alumni] came out of their way to travel all the way down to Florida and rented out a huge part of the house just to show us support made us want to make them proud and do better.”

The Performance and Victory

The team’s performance of their Hip-Hop routine on the 18 was in the president’s thoughts “a huge risk for the costume design, but it was a great opportunity to learn how to dance with the briefcases and the props.” The second place prize would suggest otherwise as their coaches got to wear a silver medal and Stockton University’s team took photos holding the huge trophy, “It’s been a few years since we got into the top three leaderboard and got a trophy and medal, so seeing our coach wear it and getting to hold the cup with the rest of my team was exciting.”

Following Stockton’s victory, the UDA National’s Open Division finalists were given the opportunity to intermingle with students from other universities and unite with their own team, “To celebrate after the competition, the complex had an afterhours ‘block party’ at Hollywood Studios and we got wristbands to have fun on the rides at Disney and attended EPCOT as well.”

The president put much emphasis on the importance of teamwork and solidarity within the university, stating the deeper reason why they participated in the competition, “We did it to show our other teams our support, we like to get connected with the other sports clubs in the school and help them however we can.”

The Next Step

Stockton’s dance club and team as a joint group have an upcoming open clinic on February 21, 2026 at 10 A.M. to give Stockton students the opportunity to get to know their team on a personal level, get an evaluated rubric of their dance abilities, and teach students how to dance Hip-Hop, Jazz, and other many styles.

They also hold annual try outs for anyone interested, happening on April 4, 2026. In honor of National Girls and Women in Sports Day, Bolish offered these final thoughts, “It’s always an inspiration to see the hard work and effort of the girls on our teams, whether it’s the older members who inspire me to do my best, or the newer members who worked so hard to be here.”

For more information, follow @stocktonuniversitydt on Instagram. Their performances can be viewed on YouTube at stocktonudanceteam.